


Happy Hogan’s Home Ice Cream Delivery Service

by Grace_d



Series: Short Stories for Small Spiders [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Happy Hogan, Drinking, F/M, Gen, Happy Hogan Has A Heart, Ice Cream, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), ill advised food handling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-06-29 06:23:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19824349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grace_d/pseuds/Grace_d
Summary: Happy Hogan is a man of simple means, and simple routines.He's not going to let something as trivial as the decimation of half the universe deter him from doing his job.It's Friday, and someone from the Parker family is getting ice cream.Post Infinity War AURated T for language (one bad word)





	1. Triangulation

**Author's Note:**

> Me:How fun would it be to have Happy take May ice cream?
> 
> Narrator: It was not fun. It was not fun at all.

Happy Hogan stares out of the windscreen at the flickering sign of Joe’s Rainbow Ice Creamery. He leans his forearms against the steering wheel, flexes his hands, twists. Objectively, he knows where he is, he can see the sign, neon bright and stupidly hipster in it’s attempts to be vintage. But he doesn’t know why he’s there. 

It’s Friday. 

Happy blinks. 

The foam of the steering wheel splits under his fingers. 

It’s Friday, and Happy is aimlessly circling within the triangular base of his old routine. The lowest geographical point, Midtown School of Science and Technology, the highest, the Avenger’s upstate compound. The other side of the base, the Parker’s apartment in Queens. 

It’s Friday, and Happy should have an irritatingly bright Peter Parker in his backseat, hooting with joy that Happy’s pulled into Joe’s Rainbow, as if Happy hasn’t pulled in there every time since Parker’s eyes went as wide as the wheel wells of the Audi. 

_“Look Happy!” Peter exclaims. “Joe’s Rainbow! This place is like, super famous! I see it on Insta all the time.”_

_Happy grunts. He doesn’t care about Instaspace or any other app on Parker’s phone._

_“A new flavour every week! The craziest flavours too. I heard the owner has a degree in ice cream making.” Peter’s every sentence ends in an exclamation mark, if you can count his sharp intakes of breath between words as the end of a sentence, and not just a giant paragraph of overexcited text._

_Happy grunts again, because he hates all this millennial crap._

_He makes the mistake of looking up into the rear-view mirror._

_Peter’s straining against his seatbelt, face pushed against the window, excited bounce in his leg. Happy thinks of the way his shoulders had dropped coming out of school today, when that kid with the popped collar had shoved him off the last step._

_“So cool.” Peter breathes, settling back in his seat, pulling out his phone._

_Happy knows Peter won’t ask him to stop._

_Happy flexes his hands on the wheel and indicates for the exit._

Happy pushes open his door, stepping out onto the bitumen. He kicks away loose papers, ignores the decaying remains of three-week-old ice cream and cell phones splattered on the footpath. Doesn’t think about all the kids taking stupid selfies as they crumbled to dust. 

A phone on the footpath vibrates. 

Happy stares at it. Wonders if he should answer, or let it go to voicemail. Thinks of all the calls to Parker and Tony he made, in the thirteen days Tony was in space, before he knew better. 

The phone stops ringing. 

Happy blinks and looks around. Where is he again? 

Oh yeah, stupid Joe’s Rainbow. 

He looks at the front door, chained shut. Someone’s remembered to lock it up. But not to shut off that irritating neon sign. He glances about again, but there’s no one around. Seems like there’s no one anywhere these days. 

Happy pulls out his sidearm, turns his face away, fires into the padlock. 

The shot echoes in the empty parking lot. 

A breeze picks up slightly, drifting napkins and other debris about. Happy’s palm burns a little, reverberates with the satisfaction of shooting something. Happy eyes his pistol, the hard, black lines of it. It’s a good gun, functional, powerful, designed to shoot customised StarkTech stun rounds, but Happy’s also carrying real rounds these days. He contemplates firing it again. 

Parker had hated Happy’s gun. 

He never said anything, but Happy saw his eyes slide away, his small shiver and sidestep whenever Happy’s jacket had flicked open. 

Happy left it in the glovebox after that. 

He holsters it now. Pulls the chains on the door away and pushes inside the abandoned ice creamery. 

The freezers hum and the lighted display case throws shadows across the pale white walls inside. Happy goes straight to the back, ripping open the industrial deep freezer. A rolling wave of cold air smacks him in the face. Stacks of white tubs are lined up, frozen droplets of water clinging to their sides. 

Happy knocks them aside as he searches. 

Salted coconut and mango salsa. Happy hoists that one up. Parker loves Asian flavours. 

Nicky Glasses. Happy hoists that one up too. Stupid name, decent caramel coffee ice cream. 

Happy leaves with 20 litres of ice cream but he does tuck two hundred dollars under the till. 

He places the ice cream gently onto the side passenger seat, then buckles the seatbelt over it. He pulls out of the carpark and back onto the highway. He drives for twenty minutes, weaving too quickly between abandoned cars on the near empty road, before he realises, he doesn’t know where he’s going. 

He could go to Tony. He should go to Tony, ladened down with ice cream, Lord knows the man needs some extra calories. 

But if he goes to Tony, he’ll have to see Tony. And Pepper. And it will be a whole thing. 

Happy doesn’t feel like doing a whole thing right now. 

_“He was so scared, Hap.”_

_Happy nearly jumps out of his seat when Tony speaks. His voice sounds like ripping paper, like his vocal chords have been dragged over broken glass. It’s startling, but right somehow. That Tony’s ravaged voice matches the rest of him._

_Happy didn’t even know Tony could speak anymore._

_“He was so scared.” Tony continues, staring something Happy can’t see. “I tried to send him home, but he worked out the tech so fast, gained control and overrode my commands.”_

_Happy clears his throat. Tony’s speaking like he’s giving a deathbed confession. And Happy doesn’t want to hear it._

_“He’s a smart kid Tony. Stubborn too.”_

_“Yeah. He was.” Tony blinks at the ceiling. “I should’ve accounted for that.”_

_Tony slips off into a medicated sleep not long after. Happy slips out of the room, wrestling down his anger. Because Tony should’ve accounted for that._

_Happy doesn’t know a lot about what went down on Titan, but he’s sure there must’ve been time before they hit the point of no return to send the kid home. To lock him out of the system, to cage him in an Iron Suit and press return to sender, to knock his stubborn ass out and send him home in an emergency escape pod. They do it all the time in movies. So why didn’t Tony do that?_

_Happy kicks Tony’s bedpost before he leaves the room. The man on the bed doesn’t stir._

Happy pulls up to the dingy apartment block in Queens without remembering how he got there. He looks up at the building he’s never entered and shreds the steering wheel a little more. It makes no sense for him to be here, but he’s got to complete the route, shortcutting between point A to point C. That’s his job. It’s Friday. 

He leaves the car on the street out front, parked haphazardly one wheel on the sidewalk between two garbage cans, but locked up. If someone steals it, well, whatever. The car’s full of painful memories now anyway. Happy can just hotwire one of the other abandoned vehicles idling around the city. Cradling a bucket of ice cream under each arm, he knocks the door open with his foot and heads across the scuffed linoleum for the elevator. 

As he crosses the lobby the lights flicker twice, then drop out completely. Happy pauses, then the lights come back on. Happy swears, looking around for the stairwell. The condensation on the outside of the bucket’s soaks into his shirt, pressing freezing cold into his sides. 

By the third floor he’s considering sacrificing a flavour, or just laying down and giving up in the stairwell. But he can’t show up without the coconut mango, he won’t eat anything but the caramel, and he’ll be damned if he dies in a shitty Queens apartment block. 

By the fifth floor he’s realising he hasn’t called ahead and he has no idea what to say. Like most things in his life, in his old life, he hasn’t thought it through. Just done it, and afterwards asked himself what the hell he was thinking. He continues upwards. 

His heart is pounding, something that Happy would normally find uncomfortable, but things stopped feeling uncomfortable about the same time Happy realised that he was barely noticing the taste of human charcoal in his mouth anymore. 

He pushes onto the seventh floor and shuffles down the scruffily carpeted hallway, gasping a little. He stops in front of 712, dropping the caramel flavour to the ground. He hesitates, gulping down air, then raps on the door, gently, almost inaudibly. 

Maybe she’s not home. Maybe he doesn’t want her to open the door anyway. 

He hears shuffling. Then a pause. 

He runs a hand through his sweaty hair. 

This was a terrible idea. 

He hears one lock open, then two, then a third. 

May Parker yanks the door open, a little wild eyed as she takes him in. 

“What are you doing here?” She croaks. 

She looks, awful. Eyes puffy beneath her glasses, hair piled on her head in a crooked high bun, stains on her tracksuit pants. 

Happy holds out a bucket of ice cream. 

“It’s Friday.” 

_“How could you?!” Happy can hear the screeching from where he is._

_“Encouraging this- Swinging around like-”_

_Peter shuffles in the pristine office waiting room chairs, squashing his hands between his knees._

_“BLACK EYE-”_

_Happy gives him a commiserating half grin. Peter shyly returns it, before his head whips around, as though anticipating something Happy can’t hear yet._

_A second later the office door is yanked open and May Parker storms out, her wedges making a disproportionately loud echo in the quiet office building._

_Peter jumps to his feet._

_“Come on Peter, we’re going home.” She snaps, taking Peter by the hand._

_Happy doesn’t miss the white knuckled desperation in the way her fingers thread tightly with Peter’s. He rises smartly from his seat, buttoning his suit jacket and smoothing it down. He opens the door for Mrs Parker with a professional nod._

_She rounds on him, fury sparking in her eyes._

_“And you.” She hisses at him, jabbing her finger into his chest. “If you ever let a single call from my boy go to voicemail ever again, I will personally hunt you down, and burn your whole life to the ground.”_

The Parker apartment looks like a modern day mausoleum. Candles melt wax onto every available surface, and Happy eyes them off as May rattles about the kitchen. They throw shadows across the frames May has crowded over the walls, casting ghostly shadows across the images of Peter and an older man that adorn every surface not occupied by candle wax. Happy wonders if there were this many photos before. He also wonders if the apartment might burn down with May’s ambition to immortalise her family, and if she should be saving the candles for the next black out. 

May comes into the living room, holding mismatched two spoons aloft. She fixed her hair sometime while she was rummaging through her kitchen, retying it in a low braid slung over one shoulder. Now that she looks less frazzled Happy can see the sadness pulling at her, bringing down the corners of her eyes and mouth. 

She raises an eyebrow at him. 

He leans over and takes a spoon. 

They pry the lids off the ice cream buckets and find solid blocks of ice cream floating in a soup of cream. Happy hauls the 10 litre buckets over to the sink and pours off the milky excess, the cream swirling around the dirty dishes piled in the sink. He brings them back to the waiting May, pushed back in the armchair, blanket around her shoulders. 

They dig into the ice cream containers in silence. The candlelight flickers. 

At some point May produces a bottle of vodka from somewhere, under the couch Happy thinks. They pass it back and forth between them, alternating spoonful of ice cream with mouthfuls of alcohol, until at some point May gets up from the couch and heads to the corner, swiping dust off a vintage record player. She brushes her fingers across it reverently, and Happy has a feeling the kid gave it to her, probably fixed it up himself. Lord knows Happy’s had Parker haul enough random junk into his car over the past few years. 

She places the needle down on some indie record that Parker, the younger, probably loved, and collapses back down on the couch. She waves her arm lazily in the air, humming along. Happy watches her finger trace invisible lyrics in the air, ignores the tears that trail from the corners of her eyes, collecting in the shell of her ears. His eyes drift close, to May’s off key voice singing softly and the sound of twanging guitars. 

* * *


	2. Convergence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me:How fun would it be to have Happy take May ice cream?
> 
> Narrator: It was not fun. It was not fun at all.

Happy wakes up with a more powerful feeling than he’s felt in weeks. The feeling he's going to vomit. He rolls his head sideways, tumbling off the couch. He scrambles for the ice cream bucket, ducking his face into it. Happy heaves, and heaves again, gasping for breath. He heaves until his eyes sting and his throat burns and it’s a good feeling, purging all the ash and uselessness from his body. 

His retching settles and he rubs a hand down his sweaty face, flinching as he catches a hint of his own breath. From somewhere else in the apartment, he hears the echo of more vomiting. He looks around, seeing that May’s no longer on the couch. He stumbles down the hallway, one shaky hand on the wall, knocking photos as he does. 

He pushes open the bathroom door hesitantly, to find May wrapped around the toilet bowl, shaking a little as she throws up litres of ice cream and alcohol. He starts gathering her hair from around her face before the urge to hurl strikes him again, and he vomits into the sink. This session is shorter than the last. He turns on the tap to clear the sink and gargles some mouthwash before turning back to May. 

She’s stopped throwing up now, and instead is sobbing, her face resting against the pink floor tiles. Happy reaches over May’s shivering body and turns on the shower. Thankfully, the water runs hot and the water pressure is strong. He pushes at May gently, and she groans in protest but unfolds herself and crawls across into the shower, fully clothed. She sits at the bottom of the shower, curled in the corner. She takes up so little room. And Happy feels like he takes up too much. 

May cracks one tired eye open, and looks Happy up and down, kneeling half in and half out of the shower and soaking wet. 

“Why are you here?” She asks. 

“It’s Friday.” Happy says, blinking a little because he thought he’d already explained this. 

May looks at him with empty eyes. 

“We always get ice cream on Friday’s.” Happy says, picking up bottles from the bottom of the shower to squint at, looking for some shampoo to get the vomit out of May’s hair. 

May doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Happy sorts through acne wash, hydrogen peroxides and iodine washes and tries not to think about why there’s a pile of those in the bottom of the Parker’s shower. Even though he knows, the same reason he’s got a military grade first aid kit in the trunk of his car now. Not that their preparation was worth a damn in the end. 

_Happy eyes Peter suspiciously through the rear view mirror. He didn't miss the way Peter limped up to the car today, or the hesitant way he lowered his body into the backseat a moment later. He sees the way Peter’s twisting his fingers anxiously together, elbows tucked into his sides. He sees the purple bruise blooming on his elbow. The rip in the side of his sweater. There’s dirt and some dried blood spots on the knees of Peter’s jeans._

__

_Happy turns up the music to cover the sound of Peter’s sharp hisses as he pokes at whatever injuries he’s nursing. Then he turns the music up more to cover the sound of Peter’s uncharacteristic silence._

_It’s not until after they hit Joe’s Rainbows that Peter brightens up “Lemongrass Crème Caramel Happy!”, and Happy tries to get it out of him._

_“You’re in the front for the next leg kid.”_

_Peter’s eyes go wide and he rubs the ice cream off the underside of his nose. He drops into the passenger seat, hands reaching eagerly._

_“Don’t touch the music.” Happy says._

_Peter deflates on himself, rubbing his bruised elbow absently._

_“So he finally got you, did he?” Happy asks casually._

_“Yeah.” Peter finally admits. “I noticed too late. And- I figured it was about time he hit me. Too many near misses now to justify.”_

_Something in Happy twists angrily. So like Peter, just, accepting the eventuality._

_“You know what I think you should do?” Happy says._

_“Turn the other cheek?” Peter says meekly._

_“I think you should clock him in the face.” Happy says._

_“I can’t use my powers against some kid.” Peter protests._

_“Fine then. You’re smart. Throw some chemicals together, take the nerd revenge.”_

_“Are you suggesting I build a bomb?” Peter’s voice is comically high._

_“Explosive, paralytic gas, robot with laser eyes, I don’t know what science kids do.” Happy waves his hand._

_Peter laughs, the sound bursting free and bouncing around the car. Happy doesn’t even mind when Peter starts bouncing in his seat too, excitedly designing more and more elaborate revenge pranks, although he does turn the music up._

“You look away for one second, you just blink, and suddenly they’ve got this whole life you can’t even touch.” May whispers. 

Happy finds the herbal shampoo that looks like May would use it. It looks like how May’s hair would smell. 

It’s basically empty. 

“And it’s supposed to be good right? That’s what kids are supposed to do. Grow up, get their own lives. Meet people you don’t know, do new stuff. Like- like ice cream on Friday’s that you only hear about later. But it just makes them so far from you. Out of reach.” 

Happy focuses on trying to eke the last of the shampoo out of the bottle. 

It’s pretty much empty, like Happy was pretty much empty and the world was now pretty much empty and May’s eye’s were empty and everything was just empty now. 

“He was out of my reach.” 

_Happy almost walks straight into Pepper, hovering outside the door._

_“Did you talk to him?” She asks in a whisper. Her eyes are bloodshot and dry._

_“Not really.” Happy whispers back._

_Pepper bites her lip, reaches out to touch the door to Tony’s room. She stares at it as if she can stare through it._

_“I’m pregnant.” Pepper’s voice is so bitter. “Just over a month.”_

_Her face turns from the door and she meets Happy’s eyes. Happy thinks he can see flickers of fire in there, as if Extremis is still in her system and clawing to get loose._

_“He doesn’t want a new baby Pepper.” Happy growls, his anger swelling, not at Pepper, not at Tony but at the whole screwed up universe._

_He kicks the wall, his foot cracking the dry wall. Beside him, Pepper clenches her fists, her nostrils flaring._

_Happy grabs her elbow, drags her behind him down the hallway to the kitchen. He slams the kitchen door closed behind him and grabs a plate, handing it to Pepper. She looks down at it, grasping it with both hands. Happy picks up his own plate._

_“He doesn’t want a new baby!” Happy yells it this time, throwing the plate to the ground. It smashes into four pieces._

_“I don’t either!” Pepper screeches suddenly. She throws her plate hard, and it smashes into a dozen pieces._

_She grabs another plate. Throws it. Screams._

_A dinner set for 12 is destroyed before it’s ever been used._

_Happy only threw the first plate to show Pepper what to do._

Happy smacks the shampoo bottle in his hand. Smacks it once, twice and then the shampoo comes out so suddenly that Happy’s left with a cupped hand full of shampoo. He dumps it all in May’s hair and she starts scrubbing, working the shampoo into a thick lather. Happy casts his mind around, trying to think if he's even seen a woman wash her hair. Just in TV ads, he thinks, and May washing her hair looks nothing like that. She does it so absently, an automatic motion that speaks of efficiency and someone who has a lot of hair to clean and not a lot of time. Half those women washing their hair in ads don't exist anymore. 

“Pepper’s pregnant.” Happy says. 

“Oh fuck.” May whispers, her hands slowing. 

“Oh fuck indeed.” Happy replies. 

The water cuts out abruptly. They both crane their necks upwards to look at the shower head as a slow dribble leaks out and the pipes rattle. Everything's at risk of cutting out these days and does. Water, power, gas, will to live. There's nothing special happening in this shower that isn't being repeated all across the city, all across the world. Everything's cutting out, everyone's giving up. Fat, lonely drops of water splatter in the bottom of the shower, echoing between the glass walls. 

May looks down at her hands, covered in thickly lathered shampoo. Bubbles run from her forehead down her face, catching in her eyebrows. 

May looks up at Happy, dumbfounded, drenched in her sweatpants and covered in soap bubbles. She blinks once, twice. 

Then she laughs. 

May laughs so hard that Happy’s afraid she’s going to unhinge, that something inside her is broken and only laughter can come out now. 

But May also laughs so lightly, a little breathy and giggly and silly. Happy’s aware he’s sitting half in the Parker’s shower, and there’s frothy shampoo on his wet shirt, and the world smells like herbal shampoo, and everything is so messed up. 

So Happy laughs too. 

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who doesn't love a little bonding over food poisoning and the end of the world as we know it! 
> 
> Thanks for reading!   
> Hit me up in the comments if you wish someone was bringing you ice cream every Friday and I'll see what I can do.  
> OR find me on tumblr @reachingforaspark although I don't really do much there!


	3. Symmetry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So many seasons and reasons for ice-cream, as Happy and May attempt to negotiate the Post Snap world.

Happy brings ice cream every Friday, not from Joe’s Rainbows, and they don’t get food poisoning again. He brings ice cream during the autumn riots, and he and May lock themselves in the apartment, May with her baseball bat and Happy with his firearms, because it’s her damn home. The city burns and the screams of furious grief echo up the alleyways. They lock the windows tight, and go through packets of corn chips dipped in tin salsa, m&m’s and boysenberry ice cream. When the smoke settles, it’s like a new ash filled world all over again. 

* * *

He brings ice cream in December, when May’s sitting in a puddle of fairy lights that are reflected in the tears spilling down her cheeks. They don’t play music, or talk at all, just hang childishly painted ornaments with reverence. Happy can’t believe Peter’s hands were ever so small as the tiny imprints in clay he finds, and his own hands trembles as he passes them over to May. Three stockings hang, Ben, May and Peter, and Happy doesn't understand how May doesn't fall through the black holes in her life. In the morning they smash caramel corn and marshmallows into vanilla ice cream for breakfast, and May turns the Christmas carols up extra loud. 

* * *

Morgan is born on a Friday, and Happy brings ice cream in for everybody. They sit around an exhausted looking Pepper while she nurses in her hospital bed. They lick ice cold green pandan ice cream off shared spoons and stroke Morgan’s round cheeks with sticky fingers. Tony cries first. Then May. Happy cries later, driving home to his apartment alone. The world has reinvented again. 

* * *

In high summer, they go out for ice cream in cones. They sit on the ferry, curls of cold liquid dripping down their wrists. May grabs his cone and bites the soft serve like a heathen. They swing their feet on the benches and feel the sea salt spray on their faces. It feels like being a teenager again. Happy tells May about the heart attack Tony had that time Peter stumbled into the middle of the FBI takedown. She gasps comically as Happy admits it cost 20 million dollars to replace the ferry. May leans too far over the railings and Happy hoists her back, wishing her sparkling laugh was so easy to hold. 

* * *

One ill-advised Friday, Happy takes May to Joe’s Rainbows. He can’t get out of the car. They drive home in silence. May holds his hand over the console, and it helps just a little. 

* * *

Eventually, after hundreds of scoops of ice cream, pounds gained and lost between them, tears and laughter and some soft acceptance of the empty Peter shaped space in their lives, Happy brings another tub of ice cream to the Parker’s. He stammers through a formal invitation to eat some food that isn’t just dairy and sugar. May’s eyes light up behind her hipster glasses and she kisses him, full on the mouth. 

* * *

They’re eating ice cream in bed watching awful reality TV when Tony calls. Be ready, he tells them. Happy knocks the carton over as he hauls himself up, rushing around the apartment. He sweeps up all the miscellaneous pieces of his and May’s life together into bags while May hovers around him, hand on her forehead. She argues, pulling his clothes back out as fast as he can throw them in, but she doesn’t understand. Happy does though. When Peter comes back, everything will be different, and so Happy and May need to be the same. 

* * *

Happy doesn’t actually know what day Tony’s funeral is held on, the cycles of time bleeding into each other since the earth heaved under the final Snap. He does know that his job isn’t over, just because Tony’s gone. 

Late in the afternoon, when the wake dissolves in bottles of scotch and wine, Happy gathers Morgan to his side. He places her carefully in her booster seat before ducking back out of the car again. He finds Peter, his empty eyes showing his mind is on some alien planet right now. He leads him by the elbow to the other side of the car, and buckles him in too. The symmetry of it all nearly suffocates him as he reverses out the driveway. 

Happy knows exactly where he’s going, and what he has to do. 

It’s Friday. 

Morgan wants a cheeseburger, and Happy's going to get an ice cream for Peter. 

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading this three chapter fic that should've just been a one shot probably.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh boy this one really came out differently than I thought it would! 
> 
> Let me know what you think in the comments!!


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